The Islington Plan for Looked After Children and ... - Islington Council

ecause the borough is very small. Children who are placed in
neighbouring local authorities are still able to maintain their school
placements and access Islington’s high quality multi agency services. The
challenge is to ensure that children placed further away from local
provision receive equitable services where they are placed.
b. Ensuring a sufficient supply of local placements is challenging due in part
to the national shortage of foster carers and a shortage of foster carers
across North London. This is compounded by the fact that private and
voluntary providers are not able to offer a ready supply of local
placements including for those children with complex needs. Robust
recruitment strategies and more joint working with neighbouring local
authorities are integral to meeting this challenge.
c. A key challenge is to ensure that children who come into care, particularly
those who come in an emergency, are initially placed in care placements
that are suitable and able to meet their specific needs so that placement
stability is not comprised. Ideally the caring resources of extended family
should be investigated before children become looked after, however the
circumstances in which some children are removed from their parents can
impact on the willingness of parents to work in partnership with the
Council to identify extended family at the earliest opportunity.
d. The timeliness of permanency planning is a key requirement to meeting
the Sufficiency Duty. The requirement is that all children with adoption
plans be placed with an adoptive family within 12 months of the decision.
The challenge is to achieve this for all children in particular siblings and
boys of black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Although the changes to
the NMS support a more flexible approach to achieving timely adoption for
children of black and minority ethnic backgrounds it is still imperative that
Islington recruits a diverse range of adopters to meet needs this in turn will
ensure that timely care and permanence planning can be achieved for
these children.
5.6.4 Priorities for 2011-2014
a. To develop a robust process for commissioning placements for
children and young people.
We have developed a strategy to ensure sufficient accommodation for
children looked after, care leavers and 16/17 homeless young people. The
strategy is supported by a comprehensive action plan that will assist the
Council to ensure that there are sufficient local placements for children
which offer choice, improve their outcomes and deliver value for money.
A key aim of the strategy is to develop a range of accommodation
providers in the local area and to ensure that a full range of safe and
suitable accommodation is available that is capable of meeting different
needs.
We will ensure that we spread the message more widely to corporate
parents about the need to support the continued efforts to recruit local
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